Solomon's "Denier" Book Cheered by Inner Circle
Amazon.com has been irritatingly slow delivering Lawrence Solomon's new book The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud - and those who are too fearful to do so. It's like waiting for the movie version of a favorite novel: you know the whole story, but you still want to see the Hollywood spin.
The book is based on a series of columns that appeared in the National Post - a desperate attempt to prove that there is legitimate scientific debate about whether humans are causing climate change. It will be most interesting to see if Solomon includes in the book the apologies, disclaimers and corrections that he had to write after his subjects slammed him for misrepresenting their work or their position.
We'll let you know the minute the book arrives.
I could have waited until it came out at the library. Just like State of Fear ... I'll probably sign that out someday.
Actually the longer format of the book allowed Larry to quote at length from nearly all the scientists cited in the book; which also includes hundreds of footnotes and dozens of urls so readers can judge for themselves.
Moreover because there is so much more science in the book than there could be in the columns, in many cases the more complex explanations were reviewed by the scientists themselves.
I should note that Dr. Nir Shaviv, who is frequently claimed as an ally by Larry's critics, was of great help in getting the chapters on his work correct and gave his enthusiastic permission to adapt material from his website for sidebars in the book, for which he reviewed the final text.
So when you claim that some of scientists say Larry distorts their views, I hope you will acknowledge that the oft-cited Shaviv does not belong on the list.
Who else does? Weiss? Fine. Larry has never retracted his column on Weiss for the simple reason that he was right. Weiss did write what Larry claimed he wrote. The Post apologized because papers generally do what their lawyers tell them to and Canadian libel law is not friendly to free--or truthful--speech
Richard Vigilante
Publisher
Perhaps you could supply the exact source and quotes for this paraphrase of Weiss's beliefs given by Solomon in the original article: "The science is anything but settled, [Weiss] observes, except for one virtual certainty: The world is about to enter a cooling period."
When and where did Weiss write (or even say) the earth is about to enter a cooling period? There are certainly no direct quotes from Weiss to that effect in the New Scientist article that Solomon appears to have relied on.
See:
http://environment.newscientist.com/article/mg19125691.100
http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/now/
If Solomon can't provide the source, then certainly he should withdraw that particular statement. We're all waiting ...
Dave Clarke
The science book about global warming has been written... by the IPCC and a dozen other academies. Let's go out for a smoke Mr. Vigilante and drive around without seat belts. And nuke some whales. Maybe install some asbestos...... perhaps the Post should consider the difference between smart alec horseshit and the truth. I think Canadians know the diff and are voting with their coin.
Despite desmogblog's attempts to smear Solomon, the first review of the book is very positive.
http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YjJmZDYxZThlMzNmNzYzZmIzMGExNWY0Mzg1MGRiZTY
The Warmists have a special hate for Solomon because he is an environmentalist who has been writing greenie articles for Pollution Probe and Energy Probe for years. Burn the heritic! Put his family on the rack! Track down and destroy his work!
Well, d'uh. It's in the National Review, one of the most staunchly right-wing Republican newsmagazines in the US. It's obvious they'd take the side of Inhofe, Morano, et al., the nonsensical side of pseudoscience and obfuscation.
"The sabotage of science is now a routine part of [North] American politics. The same corporate strategy of bombarding the courts and regulatory agencies with a barrage of dubious scientific information has been tried on innumerable occasions — and it has nearly always worked, at least for a time. Tobacco. Asbestos. Lead. Vinyl chloride. Chromium. Formaldehyde. Arsenic. Atrazine. Benzene. Beryllium. Mercury. Vioxx. And on and on. In battles over regulating these and many other dangerous substances, money has bought science, and then science — or, more precisely, artificially exaggerated uncertainty about scientific findings — has greatly delayed action to protect public and worker safety. And in many cases, people have died."
The Manufacture of Uncertainty -- How American industries have purchased "scientists" to undermine scientific verities when those verities threaten their profits.
Chris Mooney / March 28, 2008
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_manufacture_of_uncertainty
For an example of the insidious effects of industry money corrupting science, see below:
The details of Doll’s consultancy with Monsanto had originally been unearthed by freelance activist Martin Walker, who had been researching Doll’s work on vinyl chloride, dioxin, and asbestos.2 The key documents were among papers that Doll had donated shortly before his death to the Wellcome Trust Library in London. This consultancy had an added edge, because of a spat in the mid-1980s between Doll and a leading Scandinavian scientist, Professor Lennart Hardell. The latter had been called before an Australian Commission looking into the health effects of Agent Orange.3 Hardell presented evidence to support his view that dioxin caused cancer— evidence that the Commission discounted. It later emerged that much of the Commission’s evidence was taken verbatim from a Monsanto briefing. When the Commission had reported, Doll wrote an unsolicited letter to Commission judge Phillip Evatt. The letter heaped praise on Evatt and then launched a withering attack on Hardell’s competence: “[Hardell’s] conclusions cannot be sustained and in my opinion his work should no longer be cited as scientific evidence.”4 To Hardell’s discomfort, the letter was widely publicised. Doll’s papers revealed that while he was lambasting Hardell, Doll was a consultant for Monsanto (the company at the center of the Agent Orange investigation) and moreover was about to negotiate a more lucrative consultancy. When Hardell and his colleagues learned this, they wrote an article on conflicts of interest in science that later fed into the Guardian exposé.5
http://ijoeh.serverbox.net/pfds/IJOEH_1302_Tweedale.pdf
Recently it was reported that a Swedish professor in environmental health has for decades worked as a consultant for Philip Morris without reporting his employment to his academic employer or declaring conflicts of interest in his research. The potential for distorting the epidemiological assessments of hazard and risk through paid consultants, pretending to be independent, is not exclusive to the tobacco industry.
http://www.prevention.ch/amjinmed2006.pdf
Shortly before Roger Revelle’s death:
Roger [Revelle] said “Some people don’t think that Fred Singer is a very good scientist”
Reference: Paragraph 11, page three of the Beran_affidavit.pdf
http://home.att.net/~espi/Beran_affidavit.pdf
I apologise profusely for using 'Fred Singer' in polite company. I'll try not to do it again!
Bravo to C.B. for the detailed quotes and citations.
Chris Mooney is a hero. I have his earlier book _The Republican War on Science_ which shows how the radical right in the U.S. has helped foster a policy climate very friendly to big, dirty industry (got to be "pro business"!) while being decidedly unfriendly to the property rights of individuals impacted by pollution, toxic emissions, tobacco, climate change, etc.
A big part of the strategy is the "Luntz memo" ideal of "Doubt is our product." If the public becomes worried about a tangible harm being done to them by someone large, someone with a big budget for campaign donations, well, simple: just blow smoke about the "uncertainties" in the mounting scientific case showing the harm being done. Appoint a politico to run a federal department who will censor the inconvenient evidence coming out from real, frontline scientists working in the trenches detecting such problems. Play up the statements of astroturf front groups funded by the dirty industry and play down the independent work of honest scientists trying to find the truth.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spells out even more cases of this script being replayed across the whole federal government, over and over, in his chilling book _Crimes Against Nature_.
Big money can corrupt individual scientists. Huge corporations with the most at risk have the money to spend to try to do this. I find utterly laughable the claim by the deniers that the real scientists are somehow the ones being swayed by "big research money" when they point out a real problem. How the heck does the National Science Foundation, e.g., introduce an "alarmist" bias? What does the NSF stand to gain by supposedly over-funding research that shows we have a problem? Is Bush going to reward them for that?
Who writes this stuff?
It looks that there are paid liars on both sides. Seeing that the green movement and the warmists are moving more than 40 billion dollars a year (not counting carbon trading business), it comes out clear that it is a much better business to lie when paid by the warmists than from the sceptics. This “bastard” seems to be a green paid liar, of course.
The bastard said: Shortly before Roger Revelle's death: Roger [Revelle] said "Some people don't think that Fred Singer is a very good scientist"
Now here is a relevent fact. He didn't say he thought this. Someone else did.
Roger and Fred were working on a paper together just prior to his death. They respected each other. Gore and company (Lancaster) tried to slander Fred regarding the comment Fred had written that Roger made that there was great uncertainty concerning CO2 man made global warming.
They said Fred capitalized on Roger's poor mental state before his death but Roger's family testified in court that his mental state was fine right up until his death.
Besides, Fred had Roger's statement in Roger's handwriting on a galley draft of the paper. Fred won the suit and Lancaster had to appologize. That was proven beyond doubt.
So you and desmogblog are what you say Solomon and Fred are. I will refrain from stating the obvious.
It looks that there are paid liars on both sides. Seeing that the green movement and the warmists are moving more than 40 billion dollars a year (not counting carbon trading business), it comes out clear that it is a much better business to lie when paid by the warmists than from the sceptics. This “bastard” seems to be a green paid liar, of course.
The bastard said: Shortly before Roger Revelle's death: Roger [Revelle] said "Some people don't think that Fred Singer is a very good scientist"
Now here is a relevent fact. He didn't say he thought this. Someone else did.
Roger and Fred were working on a paper together just prior to his death. They respected each other. Gore and company (Lancaster) tried to slander Fred regarding the comment Fred had written that Roger made that there was great uncertainty concerning CO2 man made global warming.
They said Fred capitalized on Roger's poor mental state before his death but Roger's family testified in court that his mental state was fine right up until his death.
Besides, Fred had Roger's statement in Roger's handwriting on a galley draft of the paper. Fred won the suit and Lancaster had to appologize. That was proven beyond doubt.
So you and desmogblog are what you say Solomon and Fred are. I will refrain from stating the obvious.